Legendary charter boat captain dies at 88

Published: Monday, August 18, 2014 at 10:09 PM.

PANAMA CITY
BEACH
— Bobbi Penny and her father were driving along
Beach Drive
not too long ago. It was a nice day, and Don Morrell looked out at the water.

“It would be a beautiful day out on the Gulf today,” he said.

Morrell, a legend among the local fishing community, died on Friday from injuries he sustained in a fall. He was 88.

He might have been the oldest man with a charter boat captain’s license in the state, people who knew him said. Morrell got his license in 1949, and it would’ve expired next year. He was still running charter trips last summer.

He was a practical joker who would put smoke bombs in cars and whistles in tailpipes. He gave nicknames to some of the people he knew. He christened Rick Snellgrove, who owns Howell Marine and Tackle Supply in
Panama City
, Porky. Other men were even less fortunate in the names Morrell assigned to them, Snellgrove said.

“If he ever nicknamed you, it stuck with you,” Snellgrove said.

“As a matter of fact, today there’s a lot of them I don’t even know their real names,” Penny said Monday after the funeral.

PANAMA CITYBEACH — Bobbi Penny and her father were driving along Beach Drive not too long ago. It was a nice day, and Don Morrell looked out at the water.

“It would be a beautiful day out on the Gulf today,” he said.

Morrell, a legend among the local fishing community, died on Friday from injuries he sustained in a fall. He was 88.

He might have been the oldest man with a charter boat captain’s license in the state, people who knew him said. Morrell got his license in 1949, and it would’ve expired next year. He was still running charter trips last summer.

He was a practical joker who would put smoke bombs in cars and whistles in tailpipes. He gave nicknames to some of the people he knew. He christened Rick Snellgrove, who owns Howell Marine and Tackle Supply in Panama City, Porky. Other men were even less fortunate in the names Morrell assigned to them, Snellgrove said.

“If he ever nicknamed you, it stuck with you,” Snellgrove said.

“As a matter of fact, today there’s a lot of them I don’t even know their real names,” Penny said Monday after the funeral.

He grew up in WashingtonCounty, and he eschewed school in favor of hunting and fishing. He worked hard and made a living doing what he loved despite only progressing through about the seventh or eighth grade, Penny said.

Morrell was a loving father to five children. He taught his daughters to water ski and shoot guns, “things you didn’t really teach girls back in the day,” Penny said. When he played games with his grandchildren, he never let them win. He gave his best and he expected the same in return, Penny said.

The kids learned what would cause him to lose his temper. They learned not to expect a warm reception if they came home with a sunburn. They were expected to get high marks in school; if they got a C, they knew to expect a whipping.

“That mistake was not made twice,” Penny said.

He was a “taskmaster” who expected things to be done right, and he expected you to know without being told how he wanted things done, Penny said.

“He was a hard man,” said Mark Kelley, a captain whose father was friends with Morrell. “He was a good man, but he was a hard man.”

Morrell was so hard that, while hunting alone in the woods, when his dog stepped on his shotgun and fired a shot into his thigh he tied it off and went to look for help. The woman at the first home he came upon fainted at the sight of Morrell covered in blood.

A couple at the next house refused to call for help because they worried the police would think they’d shot him, Penny said. Morrell told them if they didn’t call for help he was going to shoot them, and they were persuaded.

The doctors thought he would lose his leg, but he told them to figure something out because he needed that leg.

“He was just very, very rugged, very salty, and he loved to fish,” Snellgrove said.

He was so hard that the second time he got shot, this time through the gut by a friend with a high-powered rifle during a hunting trip in the mountains in Colorado, he didn’t lose consciousness. His friends were panicking when the rescue helicopter was getting ready to take him off the mountain, but Morrell still had the presence of mind to alert his rescuers to the fact that they hadn’t finished securing the bucket that would carry him, Penny said.

His first boat, “Miss Penny,” sunk during a fishing outing once. He restored the boat, even though it was barely salvageable, and people would ask him why.

“I might sell it,” he would say. “I might sink it myself, but the sea is not going to take it from me.”

In the 1990s, Howard Pitts and Joel Singletary helped him design and build his last boat, “Mary M.”

Morrell had a love for fishing and a knack for knowing where the fish would be, Pitts said. It helped that he and Pitts built dozens of artificial reefs before conservation issues were understood. Government regulations intended to conserve fish populations were not always respected by old-timers like Morrell.

“My daddy caught his fair share and somebody else’s fair share of snapper and grouper out of that gulf,” Penny said.

Locals consider him a pioneer in the use of electric reels, which would occupy his time in the off-season, along with hunting. Even toward the end of his life he would work in his shop until the 10 o’clock news was over, and he’d be up again at 4 a.m., Pitts said.

He finally sold the Mary M. last fall. He never wanted to, but he was no longer physically able to continue to operate it, Pitts said.

“Part of his heart went out when he sold that boat,” Penny said.

For Morrell, fishing was more than just a way to make a living; it was the way to really live.

“It was about the money,” Penny said. “But it was more about being out on the Gulf.”